Key to the Highway

...(A)cceptance is the answer to all my problems today. When I am disturbed, it is because I find some person, place, thing, or situation -- some fact of my life -- unacceptable to me, and I can find no serenity until I accept that person, place, thing, or situation as being exactly the way it is supposed to be at this moment.

--The Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous, P. 449

It may not be the answer to all life's problems, and there always remain some things that are unacceptable. But when it comes to coping with the hand life has dealt us, acceptance is absolutely crucial. Without it we die at some point.

Most of the problems I've been dealing with lately have grown out of my inability to leave the past behind, and accept that it's not coming back. Never again will I be able to sit down with a cup of coffee and a cigarette, and enjoy that delicious feeling that nothing else matters. I could have the coffee and cigarette easily enough, but the cigarette would only give pain and very little pleasure. I'll never again wake up in a warm bed next to my wife of 25 years, with the two of us feeling about one another the way we did then. Even if we tried putting it back together (which is a nonstarter) it could never be the same as it was. We've both moved on.

I need to do more than just know these things. If I can't fully accept them I'll never make any additional progress from where I'm at now. And I've come way too far to stop at this point. But acceptance is hard, and regret clouds the mind. Too bad, for acceptance of these kinds of things is the key to the highway.

That doesn't mean we have to accept the unacceptable, or that everything is perfect in God's world. It's mostly not God's world any more anyway, we've sort of taken it over. But that's political stuff, to be taken up elsewhere.

--30--